Richest in the Graveyard?

It was a strategic moment for Dwight Eisenhower to send his $3.9 billion foreign-aid program to Congress.

Contrary to the hopes of some U.S. economic warriors, the President emphasized the need for military assistance funds for U.S. allies, put economic development in second place. "We cannot safely confine Government programs to our own domestic progress and our own military power," he warned in a fervent special message. "Without the strength of our allies, our nation would be turned into an armed camp and our people subjected to a heavy draft and an annual cost of many billions of dollars above our present military budget."

The unusually lengthy (7,000 words) message called for:

P: $1.6 billion for military materiel and training for allied forces, "a minimum figure necessary to prevent serious deterioration of our collective defense system."

P: $835 million in defense support funds to beef up the arms-producing economies of twelve key nations, with two-thirds of the money to go to "courageous and strategically located" Viet Nam, Formosa, South Korea and Turkey--"directly faced by heavy concentrations of Communist military power."

P: $180 million in pure economic aid (International Cooperation Administration's technical cooperation program) to protect underdeveloped countries from bitter choices between "bread and freedom."

P: $700 million in new loan funds for the two-year-old Development Loan Fund, to fight the rising Soviet economic offensive.

P: Encouragement of private investment overseas by ensuring private funds against risks of revolution and civil strife.

Not only is the full $3.9 billion a rock-bottom necessity, said the President, but he might well recommend additional spending when he gets the upcoming report of a top-drawer presidential foreign-aid advisory committee chaired by retired Major General William H. Draper Jr. Ike's preview: the Draper committee will recommend, among other things, better arming of NATO forces.* "Dollar for dollar," he argued, "our expenditures for the Mutual Security Program, after we have once achieved a reasonable military posture for ourselves, will buy more security than far greater additional expenditures for our own forces."

Montana's Mike Mansfield, the Senate Democratic whip, predicted that the Eisenhower program would be cut drastically to "around $3 billion." Some pundits thought that the President would have an even tougher fight than he did last year for a slightly higher aid request. But the year's events have made the hard case for strong U.S. policy abroad. In Lebanon, Formosa Strait, and now Germany, Ike noted, the aid-made strength of U.S. allies provided the best weapon against Red-made crises. Nationalist China's successful defense of Quemoy-Matsu, said the President in one example, "blunted an aggression which otherwise would have precipitated a major conflict."

The U.S. can "still lose the battle of the world if we do not help our world neighbors protect their freedom and advance their social and economic progress. It is not the goal of the American people that the United States should be the richest nation in the graveyard of history."

* If so, the Draper committee's findings will run counter to the pre-Berlin judgment of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who last Nov. 26 said that he thought too much "is being spent on military aid and not enough on economic."

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